The Saint Bids Diamonds (21 page)

“D’you want your toy back?” he asked carelessly when he had finished, and held out the automatic.

Lauber took it gingerly, as if he half expected it to sting him. The brazen impudence of the gesture left him nonplussed, as it had left Graner.

But the Saint wasn’t even paying any attention to Lauber’s reception of it. All the mental energy he possessed was taken up with this new angle on the ticket. But there was no process of logic by which the angle could be defined-or if there was, he couldn’t find it. The only certain fact was that Lauber hadn’t got the ticket. None of the other possibilities could be ruled out. Palermo might have it. Or Aliston might have it. Or Manoel might have it. Or Graner might have it, or find it at any moment, if he suspected enough to make him search for it and decided to join in the popular movement and paddle his own canoe in the buccaneers’ regatta. Or it might still be in the car and stay there-a possibility which made the Saint’s hair stand on end when he thought how completely and catastrophically the problem might be solved if Graner had an accident on the way home and the car caught fire.

“Well, what are you going to do about it?” Lauber demanded.

The Saint shrugged.

“Palermo and Graner have gone back to the house, anyway. So’s the car. We’ve got to get Aliston and the chauffeur back there. Then when we’ve got them all rounded up together —”

He broke off abruptly, listening. They had not closed the door completely when they re-entered the room; and the Saint’s keen ears caught the first sound of someone walking into the hall below. Lauber listened also in the silence which followed and they both heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

The Saint smiled again and stepped noiselessly round the table. He gripped Lauber by the arm and pushed him into the centre of the room, where he would be seen first by anyone coming through the door.

“Stay there,” he breathed. “I’ll get behind him.”

Before Lauber could protest against this doubtful honour it was too late for him to move. The Saint had retired with the some soundless speed; and when the door was pushed open he was behind it.

A moment later he emerged again, for the man who came in was Graner’s chauffeur. Simon recognized him even from his back view with the assistance of the odour of garlic and perspiration that came in with him.

“Don Reuben sent me,” he explained.

“What for?” growled Lauber, with his voice edged by the reaction.

“I have been watching the Hotel Orotava. A little while ago the Seńor Vanlinden and another man came there. The Seńor Vanlinden stayed inside, but soon afterwards the other man came out. He got in a taxi to go to San Francisco 80. I heard the driver repeat the address.”

“What else?”

“Don Reuben said one of you must go there and watch him. I am to stay here and help the other.”

Lauber looked at the Saint; and Simon stepped quietly forward and pinioned the man’s arms deftly behind his back. The chauffeur let out a squawk of startlement and screwed his head round until he saw the Saint. Simon grinned at him and averted his nose.

“Hurry up and go through him,” he said. “I’m being gassed.”

Lauber made the search, while the man squirmed ineffectually in the Saint’s expert grip. He was longer and clumsier over it than the Saint would have been, but when it was over the Saint was satisfied that at least the chauffeur hadn’t got the ticket on him.

“What was he saying?” Simon remembered to enquire, as he released the spluttering captive.

Lauber translated the message. He was still watching the chauffeur suspiciously.

“He might have hidden the ticket somewhere else,” he concluded, reverting to his main preoccupation.

Simon thought rapidly. His own judgment was that the chance was a remote one. If the chauffeur had really found the ticket at all, it was unlikely that he would have been there. Since he was a native of the island, it was stretching plausibility a long way to credit him with sufficient intelligence and imagination to cover himself by outwardly continuing his normal life, or to have been delayed from trying to cash the ticket by any fear of Joris having communicated with the police. Simon was almost ready to rule the chauffeur out of the lists of suspects, but he saw no harm in letting Lauber keep his suspicions.

“That’s quite likely,” he agreed. “You’d better see if you can make him talk while I go and keep track of this other guy.”

The scowl came slowly back to Lauber’s face.

“We’ll see if we can make him talk,” he retorted heavily. “And then I’ll go and keep track of the other guy.”

Simon faced him crisply.

“Try not to be a bigger fool than God made you! Why d’you think Graner wants one of us to watch this fellow?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care —”

“Then it’s time you started. You heard what I told Graner. He thinks this guy knows where the ticket is -and we know he doesn’t. Graner just wants to take care they don’t double-cross me-and I know they can’t. They won’t get scared if they see me, but they’ll get scared if they see you. And this is the important place to be-this is where Aliston will be coming back —”

“But you said you’d got Joris and his friend!” The Saint almost fell backwards. That was what he felt like doing; but by some miracle of will he kept himself standing there and looking Lauber in the eye without the flinch of a muscle.

“So I have got them,” he asserted steadily. “But they think I’m in with them. I don’t have to lock them up. Don’t you see that by letting them think they’re still in the running I’m making sure that they won’t go squealing to the police about the ticket having been stolen?”

“All the same,” Lauber said stubbornly, “you aren’t going out of here alone.”

His hand was sliding down to his pocket. He meant business-there wasn’t a doubt of that. The Saint regretted having given him back his gun, but there it was. Regrets wouldn’t take it away again. But the Saint also meant business. He had left Christine and Hoppy alone for too long already; whereas Lauber’s usefulness was temporarily exhausted.

Lauber was less than a yard away as the Saint faced him; he was not the same intellectual type as Graner. There was only one argument that would really make an impression on him.

Simon sized up the situation and the man in one of the swiftest calculations he had ever had to make in his life. He had already hit Lauber’s jaw once and had discovered what it was made of. But Lauber’s body had the solid paunchiness to which men of his build are subject when they begin to lead idle lives. Simon chose his mark for the second experiment with greater care.

“Tell me about it some other time, brother,” he murmured; and his fist jolted out like a piston.

A kick like the piston of a locomotive went into it, built up from the shift of the Saint’s weight and the scientific turning of his body and the supple muscles of his back and shoulders. Every ounce of his weight and strength from the tips of his toes up to his wrist went into the job of impregnating the punch with the power of dynamite. Simon wanted no more delays: he knew how much it took to affect Lauber’s constitution and generously gave him everything that he had. The blow sogged into Lauber’s stomach, just below the place where his ribs parted, with a force that drove the flesh back four inches before Simon’s knuckles had finished travelling.

Lauber gave a queer sharp cough, and his knees melted. Simon jarred his right fist up under the jaw as Lauber’s head came forward, just for luck; he didn’t wait to see any more.

The chauffeur, who couldn’t have been at all sure which side he was on by that time, made a half-hearted attempt to grab him as he ducked for the door. Simon detonated a brisk jab squarely on his nose and tripped him neatly as he staggered back. A second later he was taking the first flight of stairs at one leap.

He dodged round a couple of corners and found a taxi rank. He tossed a coin in his mind as he jerked open the door of the nearest cab.

“San Francisc’ ochenta,” he ordered, as the driver started his engine.

He lighted a cigarette as he settled back, and calmly considered what he had done in the last few seconds. He had dealt violently with both Lauber and Manoel: what did that lead to? Unless he ran up the skull and crossbones and declared open war on the whole gang, that interlude of entertainment would have to be accounted for somehow. And yet he had had no choice. Lauber’s skull was too dense and obstinate for any other methods to have been effective-the chauffeur’s nose was a minor detail. Whatever happened, Lauber had to be prevented from going where Christine was. And even now he still knew the address. Simon wondered whether he ought to have taken over the gun again and finished the job; but that opportunity had also passed by, and it was no use worrying about it.

…Already the Saint’s brain was wholly occupied with the problems of the future.

The house where David Keena had his apartment looked just the same. There were no suspicious-looking vehicles parked outside or near it, none of the symptoms of recent commotion which the Saint had been half expecting to see. Simon wondered if he could allow himself to breathe again.

He left the taxi waiting and ran up the stairs. The door of the apartment was locked, of course. He knocked impatiently, and after a while the door opened a couple of inches. Simon looked through the crack, over the barrel of Mr Uniatz’ Betsy, into the haunting face of Mr Uniatz.

“Oh, it’s you, boss,” said Mr Uniatz, unnecessarily but with simple satisfaction. “I hoped ya might be comin’ dis way.”

He stepped back from the door to let the Saint in. Simon took two paces into the room and stopped dead, staring at the figure which lay sprawled in the centre of the carpet.

“What happened to him?” he asked shakily.

“Aw, he ain’t hoit much,” said Hoppy confidently. “He tries to come in de door just after I get here, so I let him in an’ bop him on de dome like ya said for me to do, boss. Ja know de guy?”

“Do I know him?”

The Saint swallowed speechlessly. After a moment he moved forward and picked David Keena up and laid him on the settee.

“Where’s Christine?” he demanded. “Didn’t she tell you?”

“She ain’t got here yet,” began Mr Uniatz untroubledly and the Saint stood very still.

“My God,” he said, “Then Aliston did find that taxi!”

VIII
How Mr Uniatz Was Bewildered about
Bopping, and Simon Templar Was
Polite to a Lady.

TO SAY that this was Greek to Mr Uniatz would be misleading. He would not have been quite sure whether a Greek was a guy who kept a chop house, something you got in your neck, a kind of small river, or the noise a door made when the hinges needed oiling. It would have involved a great many additional problems, all of which would have been very painful. Taking the line of least resistance, Mr Uniatz simply looked blank.

“I dunno, boss,” he said, striving conscientiously to keep up with the rapid march of events. “Which taxi was dat?”

“The taxi I brought her here in, you mutt !”

“You mean you brought her here, boss?”

“Yes.”

“Christine?”

“Yes.”

“In a taxi?” ventured Mr Uniatz, who had made up his mind to get to the bottom of the matter.

Simon gathered all his reserves of self-control.

“Yes, Hoppy,” he said. “I brought Christine here in a taxi, myself, before Palermo and Aliston picked me up-before I went to the house where I found you.. I left her here and told her she wasn’t to go out. She ought to have been waiting for you when you got here.”

“Maybe dis guy takes her out,” suggested Mr Uniatz helpfully, hooking his thumb in the direction of the body on the couch. “Is his name Paloimo or Aliston?”

“It’s neither,” said the Saint. “His name’s Keena. This is his apartment.” —
“Den how —”

“I borrowed it to give Christine a hide-out. He’s a friend of mine. He turned out of the place so that Christine could stay here. And you have to bop him on the dome!”

Mr Uniatz gaped dumbly at his victim. Life, he seemed to feel, was not giving him an even break. With things like that going on, how was a guy to know who to bop on the dome and who not to bop? It filled the most ordinary incidents of everyday life I with unnatural complications.

“Chees, boss,” said Mr Uniatz pathetically, “you know I wouldn’t bop any guy on de dome if ya tole me he was on de rise. But how was I to know? De last time, ya tell me I should of bopped de guy I didn’t; bop. Dis time —”

“I know,” said the Saint. “It isn’t your fault.”

He turned back to the couch as David Keena began to make sounds indicative of returning consciousness. With the help of the Saint’s treatment, he was soon sitting up and rubbing his head tenderly, while his eyes blearily endeavoured to take in his surroundings. Then he recognised Hoppy, and the whole story came back to him. He tried to get up, but the Saint held him down.

“Listen, David-it was all a mistake. Hoppy’s a friend of mine. He didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Well, what did he have to hit me for?”

“I sent him to look after Christine. He didn’t know who you were. You tried to get in, and he naturally thought you were one of the ungodly. I told you to keep away from here, didn’t I?”

“Dat’s right, boss,” said Mr Uniatz anxiously. “I didn’t know ya was a pal of de Saint. Why’ncha tell me?”

“Get him a drink,” ordered the Saint.

“Mr Uniatz looked guilty.

“Dey was a bottle I found here —”

“Go and find it again,” said the Saint sternly. “And if you don’t find it I’ll pick you up and wring it out of you.”

Hoppy shuffled away and returned with a bottle. There was about an inch left in it. The Saint continued to regard him coldly; and Hoppy beetled off again and brought a glass. He was always forgetting the curious habit to which some people were addicted, of pouring whiskey into a glass before transferring it to the mouth-a superfluous expenditure of time and energy which Mr Uniatz had never been able to understand.

But he was eager to make amends, and even took the unprecedented step of pouring out the remains of the whiskey himself.

While David was drinking it, Simon tried to readjust himself to what had happened. Aliston must have been lucky enough to find the taxi back on its rank almost as soon as he started his search. Simon still had to wonder how he had succeeded in getting Christine away; but it had been done. She had been gone when Hoppy arrived. Therefore Aliston had had her for some time. But what could he have done with her? The Saint would have expected him to take her straight back to the house where he himself had been taken; and Aliston had a car to do it with. And yet up to the time when the Saint had left there, a long while after, Aliston still hadn’t shown up. The explanation came to Simon in a flash: for three quarters of an hour or more, Graner’s Buick had been standing outside the house to which Aliston would have been going. Aliston must have seen it, suspected a hitch and driven by without stopping.